James D. Watson

American molecular biologist

• Born: April 6, 1928
• Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

James D. Watson helped describe the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the molecule that is the basis of heredity, and also conducted significant research on protein synthesis and the role of viruses in cancer. While his contributions remained recognized, he also drew some controversy over the years, including due to his views on subjects such as race and intelligence.

Early Life

James D. Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to James Dewey and Jean Mitchell Watson. His early life was spent in the Chicago area; he attended the University of Chicago Nursery School, Horace Mann Elementary School, and South Shore High School. An intellectually precocious youngster, Watson matriculated at the College of the University of Chicago when he was fifteen, after only two years of high school. As an undergraduate, he was drawn to the study of science, especially biology, in which he achieved very high grades. Two qualities of his mind showed early development during these years: sharp perception of the natural world and the ability to master and retain complex abstract information.

One favorite early pastime was bird-watching, and Watson considered specializing in ornithology, the study of birds. (He later recommended bird-watching as good early training for the budding professional scientist.) Information mastery enabled him later to be at ease in discussions with colleagues and in lectures to students: after making careful notes, he could develop a flow of talk without recourse to those notes.

Four years later, in 1947, Watson graduated from Chicago with both PhB and BS degrees. He then moved to the University of Indiana for graduate work. There, he studied with several distinguished scientists, including Tracy M. Sonneborn and Ralph Cleland. Two other scientists helped direct him to his field of greatest interest, genetics, the study of the ways in which an organism passes on its qualities to offspring. These professors were Hermann Joseph Muller, Nobel laureate in genetics, and Salvador Luria, an Italian-trained microbiologist and another Nobel laureate. Under Luria’s supervision, Watson wrote his doctoral thesis on the X-ray inactivation of bacteriophages, viruses that invade and multiply in bacteria. He was awarded his PhD degree in 1950.

Viruses, thought at this time to be “naked genes,” are intermediate in size between the giant molecules of organic chemistry and the even more complex ones of living matter; as a creative worker in genetics, Watson saw that he would have to learn more chemistry to supplement his firm grounding in biology. A “young man from the provinces,” he yearned also to broaden his cultural outlook during this post–World War II era in which international cooperation was at a new high point. Clearly, postdoctoral work abroad was called for, and Luria, Watson’s Indiana mentor, suggested Copenhagen University, where he knew people doing significant research in the biochemistry department. Watson was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship there for 1950–51.

Life’s Work

At Copenhagen, Watson studied chemistry and continued research on bacteriophages. An important turning point occurred in Naples, Italy, in the spring of 1951, during an international biological conference that he attended and at which he met Maurice Wilkins of the University of London. At this conference, Wilkins demonstrated his technique of X-ray diffraction, exhibiting pictures he had taken of the molecule deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), believed to be crucially involved in the transmission of genetic information for all plants and animals. Watson formulated as his special goal the task of defining exactly the structure and function of this molecule. Wilkins’s pictures were one form of evidence.

At this point, Watson decided to leave Copenhagen for the Cavendish Laboratories of Cambridge University in England, where Francis Crick, well grounded in mathematics and chemistry, was also trying to discover the structure of DNA. Between the fall of 1951 and the spring of 1953, Watson worked closely with Crick and intermittently with Wilkins, carefully watching the work of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic as well.

As Watson began this work, it was already known that DNA is composed of six kinds of subunits: sugars, phosphates, and four bases (complex molecules containing the important life elements carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen): thymine (T), adenine (A), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). For Watson and colleagues, the specific related problems were: what is the exact relationship among these six subunits? How do they look together physically and act chemically? And how is reproduction accomplished through this structure?

Attempting to picture the DNA molecule more exactly than Wilkins’s X-rays had thus far been able to do, Watson and Crick, working in a shabby shack called the Hut, spent much of their time building three-dimensional models, working with pieces of wire, colored beads, steel rods, and oblongs of sheet metal. Across the Atlantic, help and competition came from California, where Linus Pauling was demonstrating, through similar models, that proteins have the form of a helix, or coil. Not yet determined, however, was the number of coils and how they are held together. For nearly two years they worked, often with Watson proposing a structural model and Crick checking its chemical and mathematical accuracy. They considered DNA structures of from one to four coils; finally, Watson became convinced of a double coil or helix, on the basis of his awareness of the repeated finding of “twoness” in biological systems, especially genetically, where one cell often divides and distributes its crucial contents to two offspring. This hypothesis about function, therefore, was crucial to Watson’s discovery of the true model for structure.

The DNA picture that Watson rightly affirmed to be too pretty not to be true turned out to be as follows: a double spiral staircase (sugar and phosphate units) with the stairs between consisting of specific sequences of pairs of the four bases T, A, C, and G. Functionally, during reproduction of the cell, this DNA molecule divides by having the two staircase parts uncoil, the stairs between split, and material from all six subunits distribute to the offspring. Each ladder half then becomes the mold, or template, for assembling new ladders.

In the spring of 1953, Watson and Crick published some of these findings in a nine-hundred-word article in Nature, a leading international journal. Their findings were greeted by immediate acclaim, followed by verification. In 1957, Arthur Kornberg of Washington University in St. Louis confirmed the Watson-Crick model by synthesizing DNA from its six constituents. The same year, Watson and Crick proposed a similar structure for viruses; this was confirmed by the electron microscope studies of Robert Horne of Cambridge. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” In 1968, Watson published The Double Helix, a subjective account of his remarkable two years in England and a rare and skillful blending of scientific reportage with personal autobiography.

However, a controversy that has long troubled the reputations of Watson and Crick involves the importance to their discovery of data gathered by X-ray crystallographers Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. Watson and Crick had little direct contact with Franklin during their own research and were given the results of Franklin’s X-ray diffraction studies of DNA without her knowledge. Neither mentioned or acknowledged her contribution directly in their published findings or their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. Moreover, in The Double Helix, Watson fails to credit her with a fundamental contribution. Franklin died before Watson and Crick received the Nobel and therefore was ineligible to share it, yet many historians believe her role in deciphering DNA did not properly receive its due.

Between 1953 and 1955, Watson was a senior research fellow in biology at California Institute of Technology, the home base of his old friend and rival Pauling. After 1955, he taught at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rising to the rank of full professor of biology in 1961, and remained on the faculty until 1976. In 1968, he became director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on Long Island, New York. Also in that year, he married Elizabeth Lewis, with whom he had two sons, Rufus Robert and Duncan James. In 1974, he took up permanent residence at CSHL.

Watson was appointed the director of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1989. He oversaw the research effort attempting to determine the sequence of codons (combinations of bases) in a complete copy of human DNA, or genome; however, he resigned in 1992 because he objected to the NIH’s plans to patent information about human genes. (The Human Genome Project completed the sequencing in 2006). Watson believed such information about nature should be generally available; otherwise, new research is jeopardized. While still at the NIH, he launched the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program in response to such concerns. Watson returned to CSHL in 1994 as president and, after 2004, as chancellor; he retired in October 2007. Earlier in 2007 the 454 Life Science Corporation produced a personalized, full sequence genome for Watson, which he published online, becoming the second person to do so. He said that he hoped such information would foster personalized medical therapies and help identify and prevent disease.

Following its founding in 2003, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, named Watson an institute adviser. The institute coordinates a multidisciplinary effort to reveal the genetic activity in a mouse brain. Watson also became the leader of the advisory council for Champalimaud Foundation in 2007. Headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal, the foundation sponsors biomedical research by neuroscientists and cancer specialists.

Watson also made significant research contributions in the areas of sexuality and reproduction of bacteria; mechanisms of protein biosynthesis in which life molecules even larger than DNA are produced through the combining of nucleic acids; and induction of cancer through viruses. Impatience with conventional, single-discipline approaches to the solution of scientific problems was a continuing, unifying theme in Watson’s work. His links to both basic and applied science and to the arts have ben underscored by the awards made to him, including the Eli Lilly Biochemistry Award in 1959, Albert Lasker Prize from the American Public Health Association in 1960, Research Corporation Prize in 1962, John J. Carty Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, the Copley Medal of the British Royal Society in 1993, the National Medal of Science in 1997, the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences in 2001, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire in 2002, the Gregor Mendel Medal and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Award in 2008, and the Prizvanie Vocation Award in 2010. He also became a member of the American Society of Biological Chemists, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for Cancer Research, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Similarly testifying to Watson's legacy of international collaboration and recognition were his many honorary affiliations to such organizations as the Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Royal Society, London; the Royal Society of Edinburgh; the Royal Irish Academy; the Academy of Sciences, Russia; the National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine; the National Academy of Sciences, India; and the International Academy of Humanism. He received honorary degrees from multiple academic institutions.

Some of Watson’s other significant publications included Origins of Human Cancer (1977, edited with H. H. Hiatt and J. A. Winsten); Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965), which introduced concept headings as a structuring device in a science textbook; The Molecular Biology of the Cell (1983); Recombinant DNA (1992); Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix (2002), in which Watson credits Franklin for her key contributions to the DNA decoding; DNA: The Secret of Life (2003), with Andrew Berry; and Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science (2007). In the fall of 2007, Watson was at the center of major controversy after he was quoted in a review of Avoid Boring People as having made racist statements, which in turn were interpreted by various media as linking race and intelligence. In the ensuing fallout, he resigned from his position at Cold Spring Harbor, becoming its chancellor emeritus of the Watson School of Biological Sciences. At the same time, he had issued an apology in which he explained that he had not meant to suggest African genetic inferiority.

Known for his sharp wit and combativeness in public forums, Watson continued to voice his opinions on high-visibility scientific matters over the years. In July 2012, he filed an amicus curiae brief arguing against the patenting of the BRCA genes that can indicate a woman's risk of developing breast cancer. Shortly thereafter, in January 2013, he made waves in the medical community, this time in an Open Biology journal article in which he questions the use of antioxidants, recommends increased research in little-investigated areas such as Myc protein blocking, and condemns the cancer research establishment for being too conservative. Although officially retired, Watson also continued to lecture at times, notably participating in an October 2013 panel discussion on translational medicine to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the DNA structure discovery for which he and Crick became famous.

Despite his earlier apology, into the 2020s Watson's reputation remained clouded by accusations that he held beliefs, evidenced by statements, considered both sexist and racist. Upon his high-profile decision to sell his Nobel Prize medal in 2014, the first time this had occurred in the award's history, he was reported as stating that he had needed a financial boost due to a damaged reputation while also insisting that much of the proceeds would be donated to educational institutions. Criticism of Watson was only renewed following the release of the 2019 PBS documentary American Masters: Decoding Watson. Commentators argued that in interviews for this project, Watson had reiterated his views regarding race and intellectual inferiority. In response, CSHL revoked Watson's honorary titles, including that of chancellor emeritus, and, while acknowledging his scientific contributions, effectively divorced itself from him.

Significance

Watson’s work underscored the importance of interrelationship among different scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics, a concept pioneered in the United States and often a model for European and Asian researchers, many of whom were encouraged to move across subject-matter boundaries during an American apprenticeship. The international, interdisciplinary conference in which scientists from many nations and fields of knowledge meet to share concerns was a recurrent event in Watson’s career as well as a symbol of political and intellectual involvement of twentieth-century America. As a result, another barrier to scientific communication was lowered in the example of Watson’s work: the distinction between pure and applied science and between the scientist and the technician; in the story of DNA identification, the photographer and the builder of mechanical models played significant roles, along with the mathematician and the theoretical physicist.

Watson’s interests and achievements also underscored the continuity between normal and abnormal. His work in genetics and molecular biology has had direct implications for poliomyelitis research and, even more significant, for the fight against cancer. The complete sequencing of the human genome, launched under his auspices, has begun to enable the development of personalized medical treatments based on individuals' DNA, an area that may prove especially fruitful for cancer patients. Finally, Watson’s career illustrates the successful combining of teaching with research, previously perceived as opposing interests.

Bibliography

Bosch, Torie. "DNA Structure Co-Discoverer James Watson Weighs In on Ongoing Gene Patent Case." Slate. Slate Group, 19 July 2012. Web. 19 Dec. 2013.

Frankel, Edward. DNA, the Ladder of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Friedberg, Errol. The Writing Life of James D. Watson. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory P, 2004.

Harmon, Amy. "James Watson Had a Chance to Salvage His Reputation on Race. He Made Things Worse." The New York Times, 1 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/science/watson-dna-genetics-race.html. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.

Kendrew, John C. The Thread of Life: An Introduction to Molecular Biology. Harvard UP, 1966.

Landau, Elizabeth. "Watson: 'DNA was my only gold rush.'" CNN Health, 28 June 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/health/james-watson-dna/index.html. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.

Lightman, Alan. "The Structure of DNA." The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in Twentieth Century Science. New York: Pantheon, 2005.

Ridley, M. Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. Harper, 2009.

Schmeck, Harold M., Jr., and Philip M. Boffy. “Rapid Advances Point to the Mapping of All Human Genes.” New York Times, 15 July 1986, p. C1.

Watson, James D. Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science. 2007. Vintage, 2010.

Watson, James D. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Ed. Alexander Gann and Jan Witkowski. Rev. ed. Simon, 2012.

Watson, James D. "Oxidants, Antioxidants, and the Current Incurability of Metastatic Cancers." Open Biology Jan. 2013: n. pag. Web. 19 Dec. 2013.